Ep. 953 - Democrats： Don't Let Nuclear War Distract From Old Hate Crimes
Summary
As Vladimir Putin threatens to detonate nuclear weapons and plunge the planet into World War III, Democrats in Congress are focusing on the truly pressing issues, like outlawing lynchings, which are already illegal and have not been a major problem for at least 70 years.
Transcript
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As Vladimir Putin threatens to detonate nuclear weapons and plunge the planet into World War III,
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Democrats in Congress are focusing on the truly pressing issues like outlawing lynchings,
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which are already illegal, always have been, and have not been a major problem for at least
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70 years. You see, for much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, lynchings were a serious problem
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in the United States, targeting mostly black people, but other races as well, notably Italians,
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who were the victims of the largest mass lynching in American history. During the 58 years that made
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up the height of lynching in America, an estimated 4,467 Americans were killed by lynch mobs,
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according to one academic study. For perspective, that is for fewer people over a 58-year period
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than were murdered in just a dozen American cities just last year. But Democrats haven't passed any
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laws to stop the historic killing going on right now, probably because they themselves unleashed
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the crime wave during the BLM and Antifa riots of 2020. At the same time that the House voted to
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make lynching illegal, again, to make it super duper illegal, Senate Democrats voted to enshrine a
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sacred national right to lynch babies in the womb. Fortunately, the Senate Democrats failed by about 14
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votes. Babies in pro-life states are safe for now. But then again, it's hard to say that any of us
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are safe when an autocrat in Russia is threatening to unleash nuclear holocaust on the world if he is
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not allowed to proceed with his invasion of a sovereign nation, an invasion that our own idiot
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leaders invited him to undertake, while those same idiot leaders focus their firepower on non-existent
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problems and American babies. What a time to be alive. For now, I'm Michael Knowles. It's The Michael
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Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment yesterday is from Steve Robson, who says,
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in response to Michael's comment about how this is the first major war in his lifetime between
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civilized nations, Joy Behar has now rescheduled her vacation from Rome to Fallujah. That's true.
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Who wants to go to Venice when you could go to a civilized city like Aleppo, right? Because they're
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all so civilized. There's no difference whatsoever between this war. So insist the liberals. It's
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insane. You know where I want to stay, though? Right here in America, where we've got grade A,
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number one, the best beef in the world, American beef brought to you by good ranchers. A lot of the
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meat that you buy in the supermarket is just crap, and it's mislabeled, and they say it's product of the
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USA, and it's really imported from some cheap ranch overseas, and then the cartels here just
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minimally process it, and they say product of USA. Don't get that. Good ranchers goes to actual
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because they package it in individual helpings. So something like 40% of the meat in the United States
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just gets thrown out, doesn't end up being eaten because you buy the big pack of it,
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Before we get into all the actual pressing problems that matter right now and not a problem
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from 70 years ago, I am always surprised when I look up the history of lynchings in America
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at how few lynchings there were. Lynchings, very bad. We're all anti-lynching. Don't.
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Lynching, very bad. But the way that people talk about lynchings, you would think there were millions
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of lynchings in America. You would think that there were at least hundreds of thousands, but there
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weren't. There were relatively very few. What was it? 4,400 some lynchings? And actually, if you look
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into the history of lynchings, the death penalty was really brought to the fore in America and promoted
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as an antidote to the lynchings because there were all these extrajudicial killings that was very,
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very bad. And so politicians who were trying to stop this and reform the system actually promoted
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the death penalty as a way to discourage lynch mobs. Now, there's a kind of irony here that the
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House voted to pass this anti-lynching bill to make lynching illegal again. They were going to make it
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a federal hate crime and they will do that as opposed to a love crime. Those love crimes are bad,
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but the hate crimes, they're a lot worse. But the maximum sentence for someone convicted of committing
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a lynching under this legislation is 30 years. To me, the crazy takeaway here is that Democrats only
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believe that you should be punished for 30 years if you lynch someone. Call me old-fashioned. Call me a
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little fire and brimstone. I think the punishment should be much higher. I think if you lynch somebody,
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probably you should just get killed by the state, right? But the Democrats have tied themselves
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into Nazi or because the Democrats are anti-death penalty. So they can't, they can't push for the
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death penalty even for as a punishment for something like lynching. So they say, okay, we're, we're taking
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lynching so seriously. We're going to give you a relatively brief prison sentence for it, for a
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crime that's already illegal, that hasn't been an issue in 70 years. Not a great use of resources,
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not a, not a very logical, prudent sort of government, is it? No, not at all. But then again,
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elections have consequences. We get the, what was it? H.L. Mencken said that democracy is the theory
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that the people deserve, deserve to get what they want and they deserve to get it good and hard.
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So Kamala Harris yesterday, she summed it up very well when she explained what elections mean.
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As we all know, elections matter. And when folks vote, they order what they want. And in this case,
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they got what they asked for. I went off script a little bit.
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She is so singularly unlikable. I have basically nothing else to add to that clip other than that.
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She's just so painfully unlikable. Joe Biden's approval rating is about negative 15% right now.
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And hers is lower. If, if Democrats really believe that Kamala Harris is their great hope in 2024,
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I think they ought to pack it in now and Republicans should start measuring the drapes.
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Elections have an order. And I went off script. I know you did, darling. I know you went off script.
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Now, President Trump has a different take on the election and a different take on Ukraine.
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Right. President Trump, as the shelling, as the killing, as the horrible atrocities in Ukraine
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continue, he says, quote, we are praying for the people of Ukraine. God bless them all. They are
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indeed brave. As everyone understands, this horrific event would not have happened if there wasn't a
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rigged election and I was president. Show me the lie. Show me the lie. You don't even need to believe
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that the election was stolen, right? In the sense of people were carrying boxes of ballots overnight and
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you had nefarious poll workers changing the numbers. Not saying that didn't happen, but it
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didn't, it didn't need to happen for the election to have been rigged. You might debate whether or not
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the election was stolen. You really can't debate whether or not the election was rigged. The Democrats
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changed all the rules in the weeks and months before the election to be more favorable to
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Democrats. They took away most of the ballot security measures that even Democrats, even Barack Obama in
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recent years has, has talked about the importance of. They took that away because they were controlling
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the elections and they felt that they could give themselves an advantage. And they did that.
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They turned election day into election month, weeks and months. They turned the, the necessity to show
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up to vote into widespread unsolicited mail-in ballots. That's what you saw in Pennsylvania.
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This was in violation of the state constitution as a court just found, by the way, you saw all sorts
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of madness. The counting that went on and on and on. There was obviously a rigging. And I think Trump
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is right. Not, not just about the rigging of the election. That was obvious, whether it was stolen or
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not, obviously it was rigged, but he's right about Ukraine too. I do not believe Putin would have
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invaded Ukraine any more than he already had under Barack Obama. And then he just sort of stayed
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there in Crimea. I don't think he would have invaded Ukraine under Trump. My evidence is that
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he didn't. He invaded Georgia under Bush. He invaded Crimea under Biden. He didn't do nothing under
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Trump. And then the minute Biden gets into office or I'm sorry, he, yeah, the first one is Bush.
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Second one is Obama. It's easy to confuse Obama and Biden. Didn't do nothing under Trump. And then
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under Joe Biden, what does he do? He full on invades the country and he doesn't seem like he's
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going to be pulling out anytime soon. We talked yesterday about all of the propaganda that you're
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seeing in this war. You're seeing a ton of Russian propaganda. You're seeing a ton of Western
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propaganda too. Ukraine is not merely a battle between the Ukrainians fighting for their nation
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and Russia fighting for its greater empire, but it's also a proxy battle in a sort of new cold war
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between the West led by America and NATO and the European union and, and Russia. New cold war,
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same as the old cold war. And, and Ukraine is that battleground. Okay. And so you're seeing a lot
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of Western propaganda about how well the Ukrainians are doing. The ghost of Kiev is shooting down half a
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dozen Russian fighter pilots and the, the, you know, men of snake Island who were all killed,
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but they did so gloriously. And, you know, Zelensky is there on the front lines wearing
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his fatigues. And, and none of that is exactly true. That's wartime propaganda like you see in
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every war, but it's giving up the false impression to the West, uh, which is that Ukraine is winning
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this war. Ukraine is not winning this war. Ukraine is fighting valiantly. There's no question about
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that. Russia is the aggressor party here. There's no question about that. But I think a lot of
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Western liberals in particular are laboring under the misapprehension that Ukraine is going to pull
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it out. They're really close to winning. They're not. Russia has so much more power. They've got
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all the advantage. They've got all of the leverage. If you were, you don't want to gamble on the future.
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You kind of hope that the valiant, you know, Western looking Ukrainians can pull it out, but
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people are in for a big surprise if they think that Putin is being routed. He's not, he's still
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winning the war. And so then the question is this, the longer this drags on, the more frustrated Putin
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gets that this isn't going fast enough. What is he willing to do? The man has threatened to use
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nuclear weapons about as bluntly as a world leader can. Marco Rubio, who's on the Senate Intelligence
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Committee, is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He said, there's something
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seriously wrong with Putin. This is not the same man we've been dealing with 10 years ago. So then
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K-N-O-W-L-E-S. Are we going to die? Not even because of some military operation in Eastern Europe,
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but because Russia drags the United States or the European Union, NATO, sort of tomato-tomato,
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into a war. It becomes a world war. There's the use of nuclear weapons. How dangerous is this
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situation? Well, Rubio from the Senate Intelligence Committee says, quote, I wish I could share more,
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but for now, I think it's pretty obvious to many that something is off with Putin. He has always
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been a killer, but his problem now is different and significant. It would be a mistake to assume
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this Putin would react the same way he would have five years ago. So there are a few options on how to
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interpret what Rubio is saying. Rubio is privy to intelligence that we are not privy to,
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but also we know that politicians lie and exaggerate things, and we know that the intelligence
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community lies and exaggerates things. So one possibility, Putin has a serious illness. There
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have been rumors of this over the years. They haven't seemed to be true. The other is that Putin's
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lost his marbles. He's got some psychological condition that means he's not a rational actor.
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The third possibility is this is Western propaganda, and we're trying to undermine Putin and make him seem
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like a crazy guy and encourage the world to all go to war with him and change the regime in Moscow.
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None of those situations should make us feel particularly secure, especially when you've got
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a former superpower, one of the two superpowers for most of the 20th century, and then they got
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vanquished in the Cold War, and now they're coming back. Nuclear power, very butthurt about losing their
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empire in the early 1990s, want to get it back. You've now got them in Kiev, mired in fighting,
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trying to reclaim their empire. That's a very dangerous situation, especially because Ukraine
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isn't giving up. Got to hand them credit. They are fighting much more valiantly, I think, than a lot of
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people expected of a small nation with a corrupt oligarchic government against its former imperial
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overlords. So now, the way that Ukraine is trying to turn the tide of this war is they're trying to
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join the European Union. The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, has said, quote,
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we ask the European Union for Ukraine's immediate accession via a new special procedure. Our goal is to
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be together with all Europeans, and most importantly, to be on an equal footing. I'm sure it's fair. I'm sure
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it's possible. So at the height of this potentially global conflict, what Ukraine is saying is that
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Europe, if you annex us, if you take us in to your federation, then the country will be able to
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survive. Now, the cost of Ukraine surviving as an independent country or semi-independent country
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is that the world is going to be plunged into a war. Russia will not stand for Ukraine joining the
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European Union. So what does the EU say in response to this? The president of the EU, Ursula von der Leyen,
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says maybe, basically. Her answer is, we want Ukraine to join, but dot, dot, dot. She says,
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we have a process with Ukraine that is, for example, integrating the Ukrainian market into a single
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market, so you want closer economic ties. We have very close cooperation on the energy grid, for example.
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There are many topics we work very closely together, and indeed, over time, they belong to us.
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Those are fighting words. Those are not words to de-escalate the situation right now in Ukraine,
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even Switzerland. Switzerland is the most famously, you might say infamously, neutral country in the
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world. That's why all the sketchy banking rules are there, and people put their money there.
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Even in the hottest wars, they remain neutral. That is how Switzerland has survived. Even Switzerland
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is throwing its neutrality to the wind and coming out against Russia. They're not admitting that they're
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doing that, but they are doing that. They're joining onto sanctions against Russia. Switzerland,
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we think of Switzerland as maybe the most quintessentially European country that there
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is, but Switzerland is not in the European Union. Switzerland is not in NATO. Switzerland is a neutral
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country, and yet they're signing onto these sanctions against Russia. It got me thinking here, what do we
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want? We in the West, we want everybody to be in the West, right? That's what all of the wars of
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the 2000s were about. All of the Bush wars were, okay, these, well, one, it was because Middle Eastern
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terrorists launched a war on us, and then that war was used, right? The attacks on September 11th
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were used as the justification for saying, okay, we can't just let these people live and let live,
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do whatever they want, because they're going to come to our shores too. So we're going to remake the
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whole world in the vein of Madisonian democracy, and we're all going to be the West, and we're all
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going to have iPhones and McDonald's, and we're all going to get along just fine. And it didn't really
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work out. Didn't work out very well in Iraq. Didn't work out in Syria at all. Certainly didn't
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work out in Libya. Obviously didn't work out in Afghanistan, where we were just routed last year
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after 20 years mired in that backwater. It didn't totally work. Even here, Vladimir Putin,
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who obviously wants to expand his empire, but he's using as the pretext for this, where he's saying
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the problem is NATO's expansion, Western expansion. In the early 1990s, at the fall of the Soviet Union,
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NATO said they weren't going to expand East. They did expand East. They expanded into former Warsaw
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Pact, former Soviet nations. We're not going to allow that. Ukraine is right up on our border.
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And you look at Ukraine. I suspect most people can't find Ukraine on a map. It's not your fault. Why
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would people pay attention to the maps of Eastern Europe? I suspect Joe Biden can't find Ukraine on
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a map because he doesn't know anything. That is his fault. He's the president. He should know where
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it is. But I bet Hunter Biden can find Ukraine on a map because he had a no-show job at the corrupt
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oligarchic energy industry in Ukraine. Adds even more complication to this issue. But Ukraine is right
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there between Europe, the EU, and Russia. Ukraine is a buffer state. There's a really good piece on
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this in Tablet Magazine by Lee Smith. Ukraine historically is a buffer state. And the thing
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about buffer states is they've got to play nice with the big powers on either side. When buffer states play
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nice with the big powers on either side, generally things are okay. But the minute that buffer states
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start to turn to one side or the other, then you see tensions begin to rise. And what you saw in
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Ukraine for the period before 2013-2014 is that Ukraine was tilting pro-Russia. So then the West,
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through the encouragement of protests, through direct funding of protests and activist groups,
00:20:51.080
the West turned that government in Ukraine a little more pro-Western. Actually, a lot more pro-Western.
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Actually, so pro-Western that they wanted to join NATO and they wanted to join the European Union.
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All of a sudden, Russia says, we can't have this. Maybe we can tolerate NATO expanding to
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Poland or Hungary or to some of those Eastern European states, but we can't tolerate them right
00:21:14.560
up on our border. So all of a sudden, even when you think you're going to solve a problem by having
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Ukraine join NATO, what could be the downside of that? This is great. All of a sudden now,
00:21:23.700
you've gotten Russia into the sort of situation where they feel that it's in their essential
00:21:29.400
security interest to go in and you have war. This is something that very hawkish, very serious,
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very well-respected foreign policy thinkers in the 1990s warned NATO about. They said,
00:21:40.260
do not expand NATO eastward. George Kennan, he's the author of the Long Telegram. He's the author of
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the Strategy of Containment, the Cold War strategy for containing communist Russia. He said,
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it's a huge mistake. It's a tragic mistake to expand NATO eastward. You are going to squander
00:21:56.380
the victory of the Cold War. You're going to create a new Cold War. That's what we're seeing happen
00:22:00.940
right now. This is what is so jarring here. All war is awful. All war involves a ton of suffering and
00:22:08.640
carnage and terrible actions. There's no question about it. But some wars are scarier than others. And I
00:22:14.280
think most people believe that this war, this war that's going on right now between former superpower
00:22:20.820
nuclear state Russia and sovereign nation Ukraine is different and scarier than say, I don't know,
00:22:28.560
the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict or the war between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, for instance, right? There's
00:22:35.320
something, why? Well, I said this yesterday and it got me into trouble. I said, this is the first
00:22:39.900
major war in my lifetime between civilized nations. And all the libs, they're still doing it. Thousands
00:22:47.660
and thousands of blue check responses. Michael, you racist, you idiot, you ignoramus. What do you,
00:22:55.520
how dare you say that this is the first major war between civilized nations in your lifetime?
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What's the counterexample? I can't think of one. I didn't think I was making a particularly
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provocative, conservative, right-wing statement. It's just a simple observation.
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And actually, it's an observation that is so clear that it's not even right-wingers
00:23:19.940
making it. It's left-wingers as well. There's a journalist on CBS News. CBS News, not the most
00:23:28.380
rock-ribbed right-wing conservative outlet. Journalist on CBS News who made exactly the same
00:23:33.180
point I did, apparently, before I even made it. Now, you've got to make sure timing is a very
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Tonight is Joe Biden's first official State of the Union address. And the one thing I guarantee
00:24:53.080
you're not going to hear is the truth. You're not. That's because the Biden presidency is a total
00:24:58.420
disaster. Supply chain crisis, energy crisis, debacle in Afghanistan, all self-induced. Right now,
00:25:04.700
this war in Ukraine, much of it, frankly, probably all of it due to Joe Biden's feckless and embarrassing
00:25:10.460
leadership. Now, of course, Biden is never going to say that, but Ben Shapiro will tonight, exactly 15
00:25:17.060
minutes following Joe Biden's remarks before a joint session of Congress. Ben will offer up his
00:25:21.380
response. Call it the real State of the Union or call it a response to the State of the Union. Put
00:25:26.500
simply, Ben will destroy Joe Biden's State of the Union with facts and logic. Join me, Ben, Jeremy,
00:25:32.440
Matt, and Drew tonight at 815 Eastern, 715 Central on the Daily Wire YouTube channel. The real State of
00:25:38.260
the Union response with Ben will be airing as soon as Biden's address ends on the same channel.
00:25:43.700
Make sure you tune in. We'll be right back with a lot more.
00:25:59.280
I got in trouble on Twitter for making my comment about how this is the first major war between
00:26:03.640
civilized nations, not because what I said was false. Those tweets don't get you in trouble generally,
00:26:09.340
but because what I said was true. And you're just not allowed to say it because it offends
00:26:14.440
politically correct sensibilities. I knew this. I have always known this. And now I have been proven
00:26:21.020
right by a reporter on CBS News who made exactly the same point. This isn't a place with all due
00:26:27.300
respect, you know, like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen conflict raging for decades. You know,
00:26:35.000
this is a relatively civilized, uh, relatively European, I have to choose those words carefully
00:26:40.540
to a city where you wouldn't expect that or hope that it's going to happen. But Iraq is the birthplace
00:26:47.140
of civilization. Uh, yeah. Uh, okay. Sure. That was a while ago, you know, uh, recently things haven't
00:26:54.600
been great. I don't think you honeymooned in Baghdad, white liberals trying to disprove this obvious point
00:27:02.780
that in a more honest age, everyone would be able to agree about. Everyone knows,
00:27:08.920
everyone knows that the point is right. Okay. We're, we're living in an age where it's,
00:27:17.000
it's not even that we need to persuade people to believe that, that the things we think are right
00:27:25.900
are right. We're living in an age where even when people know that certain things are true,
00:27:31.640
they just feel that they're not allowed to say it. I'll give you an example of this. Mike Anton,
00:27:36.980
uh, pointed this out to me, the political writer, uh, Mike Anton. Uh, we were discussing
00:27:43.300
the great replacement conspiracy theory. You might've heard about this. People go after
00:27:47.760
Tucker Carlson for saying the great replacement conspiracy theory. What is the great replacement
00:27:52.180
conspiracy theory? The great replacement conspiracy theory is the idea that Democrats are using mass
00:27:57.520
migration to change the demographics of America in a way that is more politically advantageous to them,
00:28:02.860
right? And this is a terrible conspiracy theory. And if you ever even suggest it, you're a terrible
00:28:07.100
racist and you're awful and you're evil, except that the Democrats have bragged about this openly
00:28:13.860
in print in the New York times. There's a piece by Michelle Goldberg on this very point.
00:28:18.260
There have been many reports in the network news on this very, very point for many years.
00:28:24.320
And so I posed this question to Mike Anton and he said, the issue here is not that the Democrats and
00:28:31.460
Republicans can't agree on what is happening on some particular political strategy. It's that
00:28:37.360
the Democrats do something. They tell us that they do something. And then they tell us that we're not
00:28:47.000
allowed to say that they told us that they did something. It's a degree of, of gaslighting and
00:28:54.700
living in lies and an enforced living in lies that is so infuriating and so maddening in the real sense.
00:29:01.760
It actually drives you insane. Everyone knows that men are not women, right? Everybody knows that a man
00:29:07.420
cannot become a woman. Everyone knows that the hulking dude on the Penn women's swim team is not a
00:29:12.560
woman. He's a dude and looks like a dude and just obviously is a dude. But we're not allowed to say
00:29:18.540
that. And we're not allowed to even suggest or imply that we believe that. So we all know something
00:29:25.640
to be true. We just all have to pretend. In a way, there's some comfort there. It means that the world
00:29:34.380
hasn't gone completely insane. We're just liars. We're just dishonest and cowardly. But we haven't gone
00:29:41.120
completely insane. We've been right about a lot of things. The masks, for example. I think there
00:29:45.240
are some people, some people who believe that the masks are really helpful in stopping the Wu flu,
00:29:52.300
right? There are some people who really cling to their masks in a, in a sincere way, but most people
00:29:57.220
don't. Most people, including all of the people pushing the masks, know that the masks are frivolous.
00:30:04.120
Dr. Fauci gets caught time and time again at the height of the pandemic, at the next height of the
00:30:09.400
pandemic, at the surge, at the stop the curve and the spread and this. He gets caught time and time
00:30:14.180
again, not wearing his mask. He's in the middle of the baseball stadium in the ballpark. He's
00:30:19.580
throwing out or dribbling the first pitch at the Nationals game. He's got his mask on. Then he goes
00:30:24.000
up to the stands when he's actually sitting next to people. Not when he's in the middle of an empty
00:30:29.280
ballpark, but when he's actually sitting next to people, not from his household. He's got the mask
00:30:32.480
down and he's talking and chatting because he doesn't really care. Mayor of San Francisco doesn't really
00:30:35.940
care. Nancy Pelosi doesn't really care. Joe Biden doesn't really care. He doesn't believe the mask
00:30:40.060
does anything at all. Leanna Wu, the medical analyst on CNN goes on. She says, it's just a
00:30:45.120
facial decoration. It doesn't really do anything. But publicly, when we know the cameras are on,
00:30:51.940
they've all got to wear it. And they don't believe it does anything. And we don't believe it does
00:30:56.320
anything. And they know that we don't believe it does anything. And we know that they don't believe
00:30:59.500
it does anything, but we've all got to pretend. That's what we've got to do. Except now there are
00:31:03.640
diminishing marginal returns. This is an election year. Democrats are going to have a really hard
00:31:07.760
time clinging to power. And so I've got great news. We've got such terrible news generally,
00:31:12.100
the horrible, the war going on, discord at home. But I've got, I've got really good news. COVID was
00:31:18.460
cured. COVID's over guys today. Officially, I think today COVID is totally over. How did it get cured?
00:31:28.220
By the State of the Union address. The House of Representatives has decided to drop the mask
00:31:34.260
requirement just in time for Joe Biden's State of the Union address tonight. The Capitol physicians
00:31:41.460
said just a day or two ago, physicians said in an update that masks are now optional at the Capitol,
00:31:47.620
including for this special day. You're seeing in cities around the country, states around the country,
00:31:53.760
the dropping of mask requirements, the dropping of vaccine requirements, all around the same time.
00:32:01.560
COVID hasn't really changed. You see, it goes up, it goes down. There are more cases. There are fewer
00:32:07.460
cases. Deaths have been very, very low for a long time. There's going to be another variant. Experts tell
00:32:14.580
us the next variant might be pretty bad too, but that's not what changed. What changed was the
00:32:19.620
political calculation. Democrats can't keep this up forever and they realize they're not getting
00:32:24.680
political returns. The symbol of the mask is no longer helping them. And so they get rid of it
00:32:29.580
because it was a symbol all the time. Why do they need this? They need this because
00:32:35.800
everything that Joe Biden has touched has turned to ash. That's why everything, the economy,
00:32:42.380
foreign policy, social relations, trust in government, everything has turned to absolute
00:32:51.020
dirt on his watch. And so he needs a slight, any kind of win. So what does he got? He's going to
00:32:58.940
nominate a Supreme Court justice that might help him. We'll get to that in a second. And he's going
00:33:05.840
to remove the masks and say, I beat COVID. How'd you beat COVID? Because I said I beat COVID. Okay.
00:33:10.060
All right. That's enough to do it. What they're desperately trying to do right now is to avoid
00:33:14.900
this war, getting dragged into this war. That would just be the cherry on top of this
00:33:21.680
rotten Sunday of the Biden administration is if he somehow got us pulled into a war with a nuclear
00:33:28.860
former superpower. And so they're trying everything they can to avoid it. Jen Psaki was just asked
00:33:33.040
about the suggestion that has come from ignorant liberals and Adam Kinzinger. But I repeat myself,
00:33:39.740
the suggestion is for a no fly zone over Ukraine and a no fly zone. It sounds really great. What
00:33:46.900
is a no fly zone means? You know, you tell all the warships, all the airplanes to, to stand down.
00:33:53.140
Oh, good. Okay. Well, that sounds good because right now the airplanes are shooting people
00:33:56.840
and dropping bombs. And so if we, if we tell them to not fly anymore, then there'll be less death,
00:34:02.740
right? Great. Okay. No, let's get support of no fly zone. But what a no fly zone actually means is
00:34:08.720
that the people imposing the no fly zone, in this case, the United States are willing to shoot down
00:34:16.540
enemy fighters. In other words, that they are going to declare war on, in this case,
00:34:23.460
not some goat herders in Afghanistan, but a nuclear former superpower. So this would be
00:34:31.380
not a great idea. Fortunately, cooler heads are prevailing even at the White House. Jen Psaki
00:34:37.400
pooh-poohing the idea when it was brought to her attention.
00:34:40.220
On military, is there any way in which the U.S. would support a no fly zone over Ukraine?
00:34:45.160
Well, here's what's important for everybody to know about a no fly zone. What that would require
00:34:48.740
is implementation by the U.S. military. It would essentially mean the U.S. military
00:34:53.340
would be shooting down planes, Russian planes. That is definitely escalatory. That would potentially
00:34:59.180
put us into a place where we're in a military conflict with Russia. That is not something the
00:35:03.920
president wants to do. So that's a no on that. Those are all the reasons why that's not a good
00:35:08.300
idea. Okay. So she doesn't notice, she doesn't definitively say we're not going to do it. We're
00:35:13.820
not going to have a no fly zone. But she says, you know, this would probably not be the best. Here's
00:35:18.340
what a no fly zone is. Because she's got to mollify the people on her side, the gung-ho,
00:35:23.320
warmongering liberals who believe all the propaganda coming out of Ukraine and think that this war is
00:35:28.340
going to be a cinch. We'll go in, they'll all greet us as liberators, Putin will turn tail.
00:35:32.760
And that's that. Not a single American will be hurt. No casualties on our side. Democracy saved.
00:35:37.960
You know that flourishing Ukrainian democracy that even though we were complaining about it as a
00:35:43.040
corrupt oligarchy like five minutes ago, that that'll be saved. This is the fight for the free
00:35:46.920
world, right? All of this propaganda, which is essential in wars, but is not actually explaining
00:35:53.260
the facts on the ground. The White House has to say, hey, I know we've been pumping this out to you,
00:35:56.900
but don't believe it so much that we're actually going to get into a shooting war with Russia.
00:36:02.020
The Pentagon was less interested in beating around the bush. They were asked the same question. They
00:36:06.740
had a simpler answer. Now that we've seen civilian targets that have been hit, is the U.S. considering
00:36:12.400
installing a no fly zone in Ukrainian airspace? No, no. Simple enough. No, we're not going to do it.
00:36:20.160
Sorry. No. So then the question becomes, because look, I don't want to sound callous about this.
00:36:26.220
I don't want to sound, I don't want to sound like Joe Biden and seem like I'm holding out the red
00:36:30.720
carpet for Putin to invade this country and, and take it over and try to rebuild the Soviet Union.
00:36:36.340
None of us like seeing what's going on. This is horrible. The stuff that's going on in Ukraine is,
00:36:40.420
is horrifying. You're seeing a, generally speaking, civilized place being reduced to rubble,
00:36:49.060
horrible atrocities, potential war crimes being committed against civilians.
00:36:52.360
So is there nothing we can do? I mean, that's the question we keep beating our heads about. Is
00:36:58.140
there, is there nothing that can be done here? Is there, is there nothing that Putin could do
00:37:02.820
that would draw us in to the war? Jen Psaki is asked a genuinely tricky question. Is there a red line?
00:37:12.080
There are reports of illegal cluster bombs and vacuum bombs being used by the Russians.
00:37:16.700
If that's true, what is the next step of this administration? And is there a red line for how
00:37:22.980
much violence will be tolerated against civilians in this manner that's illegal and potentially a war
00:37:31.400
crime? It is, it would be. I don't have any confirmation of that. We have seen the reports.
00:37:35.840
If, if that were true, it would potentially be a war crime. Obviously there are a range of
00:37:41.040
international fora that would assess that. Um, so certainly we would look to that, to be a part of
00:37:46.180
that conversation. This was the most adept answer I've ever heard Jen Psaki give because she's asked
00:37:52.200
two questions and she conflates them. Says, would there be a red line? And would that be a war crime?
00:37:58.260
If, if Putin were using cluster bombs against civilians, for instance, which almost certainly he
00:38:02.160
already is. And Psaki says it would be, notice it would be not that would be a red line. It would
00:38:11.220
be a war crime against civilians. And therefore there are lots of international fora to take this
00:38:17.840
too, but she's not going to fall into the same trap that Obama fell into in Syria. Remember Obama
00:38:23.240
was asked if Bashar Assad uses chemical weapons, would that be a red line for you in Syria? And he said,
00:38:30.340
well, that would be, that'd be a red line. That would be a red line. And then Assad does it. He
00:38:36.440
calls Obama's bluff and there was no red line. So Psaki doesn't want to draw it. This is actually good
00:38:41.640
news because what we're looking at right now is not just a simple go in, beat the Ruskies.
00:38:53.580
That's that. Zelensky, he looks like such a cool guy. Let's save Zelensky because we like him
00:38:59.160
because now he's a star in the Western media and good stuff. Pack it up two weeks. We're all back
00:39:04.560
home having a party. World wars have, have started for less than we're looking at right now.
00:39:13.600
A random archduke was killed in Serbia and that launched one of the bloodiest, most heinous wars
00:39:23.480
in the history of the world. World wars have started for less than this. We have had relative
00:39:33.020
global peace and order under a single hegemonic American empire for about 30 years now.
00:39:42.080
And there have been cracks in that for 20 years now. And there have been other rising powers. Russia
00:39:47.460
has gotten back on its feet to some degree. China has really, really risen up and now owns a lot of
00:39:53.780
the United States, by the way, not just the politicians like the Biden family, but also a
00:39:58.420
lot of our resources. They own a lot of our debt. They manufacture a lot of our things. We're in a
00:40:01.820
much different world than we were in, in the early 1990s. World peace such as we've had for 30 years
00:40:07.960
is not the norm. Okay. Wars happened. There will be no end to war. There will be no end to history.
00:40:13.940
There will be no end to war. We are in a precarious situation. People need to be cautious and exercise
00:40:20.360
good judgment and be prudent. Some people believe we're already in another world war. Fiona Hill,
00:40:28.180
who is an expert on Russia. She served in a zillion administrations. I think she served in the Bush
00:40:34.000
two administration, the Obama administration and the Trump administration. Definitely a swamp
00:40:39.740
creature type. She's just a DC kind of think tanky policy wonky expert. She, she became very anti-Trump
00:40:47.900
even after working for Trump. But she believes that Putin would use nuclear weapons. She believes
00:40:53.240
that we are already in a third world war. She says that world wars have come, very often come out of
00:41:00.560
previous conflicts. So the second world war was in many ways, just a continuation of the first world
00:41:05.620
war with a little period of peace in the middle. And that's not merely with the hindsight of 2020.
00:41:11.840
There were a lot of astute commentators who recognized this at the time. A lot of political
00:41:16.360
cartoons after the first world war said, you know, 20 years from now, they'd have a little,
00:41:21.000
little cartoon of a baby. I for, there's a very specific political cartoon I'm referring to.
00:41:25.480
I forget exactly. I'll try to dig it up. It was a little cartoon of a baby and it was
00:41:29.060
given the peace that ended world war one. They said, all right, this baby is going to be fighting in 20
00:41:33.520
years. There's no way to avoid the war. Very famous painting of Churchill after world war one,
00:41:38.600
all the leaders from world war one. And there's Churchill looking, looking at the viewer as if to
00:41:44.800
say we're headed for war again. There's no, and then world war grows out of that. Some people view
00:41:49.080
the cold war as a continuation of those world wars. Some people view, Fiona Hill believes that the wars
00:41:55.600
of empire that we've been seeing in Afghanistan, in Syria are in many ways, a continuation of that and
00:42:01.220
things could get hotter again. So then the question we started with, we started with a very simple
00:42:06.920
question today. We're talking about lynchings. We're talking about abortion. We're talking about
00:42:12.440
nuclear Holocaust. And the question was, are we all going to die? And the answer of course,
00:42:19.900
is yes. Yes, it is. Yes, of course we're going to die. Today is Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras, Fat
00:42:31.320
Tuesday. The significance of Mardi Gras is not merely that I was pestering my wife to lift her
00:42:38.220
shirt up at the breakfast table. She did not find that very amusing. I didn't even have beads to give
00:42:41.920
her. The significance of Mardi Gras on Fat Tuesday is that we're headed for Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday
00:42:47.380
is the traditional Christian observation that we're all going to die. You go on Ash Wednesday,
00:42:54.640
Catholics still, they go to mass, they get ashes put on their forehead. The ash is burnt from Palm
00:42:59.240
Sunday. And the priest says, remember man that you are dust and unto dust you shall return. It's the
00:43:03.800
memento mori, the recognition that we're all going to die. And the weird thing about Ash Wednesday
00:43:08.580
is that I think it might be the most popular Catholic holiday of the year. It's hard to call it a
00:43:15.660
holiday, but it's probably the most popular Catholic liturgical day of the year. People
00:43:22.640
who don't go to mass, who don't go to confession or access the sacraments, people who don't even go
00:43:28.000
to mass on Christmas and Easter will often show up on Ash Wednesday. Why? Well, in part, because it's
00:43:35.420
very ritualistic and tribalistic, right? You actually get the marker on your head. You remember it's very
00:43:40.560
tangible. We're physical beings in part and we can remember that. But also it's because people
00:43:45.480
need to be reminded that we're going to die. There's a Twitter account, which is the death
00:43:50.060
reminder Twitter account. It just tweets out every day, you're going to die. We need to remember that.
00:43:55.120
Philosophy has been described as making sense of death, getting ready to die.
00:44:00.440
Life is a practice for dying. Not to sound too morbid about it, but it actually, that's a very
00:44:08.420
important thing. We need to remember, it puts our whole life in order. There's a famous line that I
00:44:14.500
love to quote from Dr. Johnson when I defend the death penalty, which is, depend upon it, sir. When a
00:44:19.420
man knows he's to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates the mind wonderfully. We in the secular,
00:44:25.860
liberal, decadent West have lost sight of deeper things in life. We think we're just going to live
00:44:34.620
forever. A lot of idiots, very high IQ billionaire idiots in Silicon Valley and a lot of futurist
00:44:40.960
types, they think we're going to live forever. We're going to plug in our brain stems, we're
00:44:44.760
going to upload our minds to the clouds, and then we're just going to live forever on this earth,
00:44:48.040
which sounds kind of hellish to me. They've certainly lost the thought of eternal life,
00:44:52.600
true eternal life through, you know, religion and stuff like that, that we, that animated our
00:44:57.100
whole civilization before it collapsed. But they think this world, you know what this world's about?
00:45:02.840
It's about doing what you want. This world, it's about getting pleasure. That's what you want. You
00:45:07.080
know, if it feels good, do it, man. Life's too short. Carpe diem, seize the day. Chesterton pointed
00:45:12.040
out the carpe diem religion, the seize the day religion is not the religion of happy people. It's the
00:45:16.940
religion of very unhappy people, desperate people who just want a little more titillation,
00:45:20.840
just a little more sensation before the lights finally go out and we turn to warm food and take
00:45:25.300
a dirt nap. Not very uplifting, not a good way to live. But if you recognize you are going to die,
00:45:32.280
there are deeper things in this life. I hope that we're not all blitzed out in a, in a, the bright
00:45:38.160
white flash of, of Putin's last stand. I hope we're not wiped out. And I don't think we're going to
00:45:44.880
be wiped out in that. But even if we were, if we died tomorrow, next week, or in 70 years,
00:45:51.340
by the grand scheme of, of time, it's not all that different. It's going to happen sooner or later.
00:45:58.680
So what are we doing now? What are we really living for? We live in a time where, where health,
00:46:06.280
public health has become so good. Sanitation, medicine has become so good that we don't see death
00:46:13.280
a lot. We, we really, we, we don't see people die. When, when people are about to die, we sort of send
00:46:18.840
them off to, you know, little hospices and things. So we don't need to look at it. We don't hold
00:46:24.400
particularly elaborate funerals or wakes anymore. We've got all this sort of medicine. So we don't
00:46:29.000
have to think about it. Very important to think about that sort of stuff, folks. Very, otherwise
00:46:35.020
you're going to lose sight of what really, what really matters in this life. The state of the,
00:46:40.740
what is the state of our union? You're going to hear it tonight from Joe Biden. The state of our
00:46:44.740
union is we're all going to die. Maybe, maybe that could actually teach us something. We're heading
00:46:51.340
into a period that is penitential, a period where you're supposed to sacrifice. Certainly Christians
00:46:58.160
are, but I would encourage everybody, even if you don't consider yourself a Christian to do that as
00:47:01.940
well. Give something up, detach yourself from the things of this world, put down the Twitter,
00:47:06.120
this would be very hard for me to put down all the constant stimulation and think about the deeper
00:47:12.160
things. There was a question some years ago, why do perfectly happy Londoners go off and join ISIS?
00:47:19.000
Why are people, why do people, are they attracted to these sorts of things? Because men do not merely
00:47:24.580
want to sit around and scroll and eat food and look at porn and just turn into couch potatoes until we
00:47:31.160
die of lethargy. No, we, mankind needs struggle. We want meaning. We want virtue. Victor Frankl said,
00:47:37.900
man's search for meaning is his deepest longing in life. We want a sense of transcendence. That's
00:47:43.440
where wokeness comes from. That's where virtue signaling comes from. We want to push up against
00:47:48.580
something. We want to struggle. That, what do they say? Soft times make, soft times make bad men,
00:47:56.780
bad men make hard times, hard men make good men, good men make soft times. You ever hear that
00:48:01.560
expression? These cycles. We've been living in a really soft, fatty period. Now we're heading into
00:48:07.020
a period that is much more one of struggle, much more one of war, one that is going to be a little
00:48:12.160
bit harder. Prepare yourself for that and remember there's something beyond the struggles and pleasures
00:48:17.100
of this world. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. See you tomorrow.
00:48:25.880
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to help spread the
00:48:30.720
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00:48:36.220
Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Also, be sure to check out the other
00:48:41.780
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00:48:46.840
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies, executive producer Jeremy Boring. Our
00:48:51.920
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00:48:57.660
Vidovsky, editor and associate producer Danny D'Amico, associate producer Justine Turley, audio mixer
00:49:04.300
Mike Coromina, and hair and makeup by Cherokee Heart. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire
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production. Copyright Daily Wire 2022. Today on The Ben Shapiro Show, Joe Biden prepares for his first
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official State of the Union address as president as chaos surrounds him on all sides. That's today